


Every Angle of Unfair Advantage

by jamestiqueeriuskirk



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Canonical Character Death, Coda, Established Relationship, Fix-It, Genderfluid Character, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), References to Norse Religion & Lore, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Sibling Incest, Slightly Blue and Orange Morality, Suicidal Thoughts, Supernatural Elements, but its okay he gets better, but thats not important
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 19:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14456268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamestiqueeriuskirk/pseuds/jamestiqueeriuskirk
Summary: INFINITY WAR SPOILERS INFINITY WAR SPOILERS INFINITY WAR SPOILERSLoki did not wake in Hel or Valhalla. He hadn’t expected to. He fell through the cracks of the universe, as he fell through the cracks of categorization. Good and evil, Jotun and Aes, trickster god and ravaging spirit, teacher and scourge, man and woman, brother and enemy and lover.It was easy for someone who flickered in between to pass through the unintentional branches of Yggdrasil, the places where the tree had grafted together with itself under the weight of its own heavy magic; maybe they were his natural country, even more so than Asgard was, certainly more so than Jotunheimr would have ever been. More serpents than any fool could imagine made their homes tangled up in the world tree, after all.INFINITY WAR SPOILERS INFINITY WAR SPOILERS INFINITY WAR SPOILERS





	Every Angle of Unfair Advantage

Loki did not wake in Hel or Valhalla. He hadn’t expected to. He fell through the cracks of the universe, as he fell through the cracks of categorization. Good and evil, Jotun and Aes, trickster god and ravaging spirit, teacher and scourge, man and woman, brother and enemy and lover.

It was easy for someone who flickered in between to pass through the unintentional branches of Yggdrasil, the places where the tree had grafted together with itself under the weight of its own heavy magic; maybe they were his natural country, even more so than Asgard was, certainly more so than Jotunheimr would have ever been. More serpents than any fool could imagine made their homes tangled up in the world tree, after all.

It was so natural he was doing it wholly by accident, now.

Where he found himself was called Vormir, a place that attracted many souls, especially those that had touched or wielded the brothers of the stone hidden there at some time in their lives.

In life, the Soul Stone’s keeper might have initially fallen on his knees in awe of Loki, though he would not have remained impressed for long before he switched to disappointment. In his undeath, Schmidt only received him blandly; grand things like Teutonic myth, no matter how real they were, did not continue to impress after a solitary, seventy-year meditation on an alien planet.

“Loki of Asgard,” said Schmidt.

“Yes, that’s me.” It was the name he’d died with, twice, even if it wasn’t the one he was meant to have.

“You are not where you’re supposed to be.”

Was that not the most succinct possible summary of his life? It made sense it would continue to happen to him in death. And if it spared him the howling winds of sandy Hel, he supposed he was grateful for it.

He didn’t ask where he was supposed to be, just how to get where he wanted to go. He didn’t have a contingency plan – he hadn’t meant to die, this time, had really meant to kill Thanos with his laughable dagger, a desperate last stand though it was; when that had failed, had tried to use his last breath to form Thor’s name with the intent that his last word would be the one most important to him – but he could make one.

He adapted. He wouldn’t have survived an extinction event, like a cockroach, but he would have found a way to wriggle back from the dead afterwards. He was beginning to think he was never going to make it farther than the underworld’s lobby.

“Your brother will be glad to have you back.” It was hard to read disgust on Schmidt’s rotted face, but he didn’t hear anything but indifference in his voice, not that Loki cared what this lowly creature – the worst sort of mortal, and no lofty, posthumous office could excise him of that – thought of him.

“I know.”

-

Loki did not have a long wait on Vormir, but it was long enough for Schmidt to tell him the few useful things he knew.

Souls without vessel did little on Vormir but observe, and Loki watched Thanos collect an Infinity Stone for the price of pitching his daughter to her death.

Under different circumstances, and played for a less harsh audience, it would have been very sad, but all Loki felt was a grim satisfaction to learn that the madman could feel pain. Before this was all over, Loki would see to it that he felt more.

He owed it to him: Thanos had promised, years ago, to make him long for something as sweet as pain, and in almost killing his brother in front of him, he’d delivered in the worst way. Loki would repay him in kind.

-

Souls did not leave Vormir raw. Loki cleaved a piece of his to the stone now studding Thanos’s gauntlet. He was often a parasite, and he’d ridden worse vessels.

And there was something to be viciously enjoyed about this trip, riding in his enemy’s greatest strength and weapon while he plotted his downfall. This was a kind of fifth column he was almost sure no one else had ever been before.

It made pleasant sense for Loki to be the first of his kind.

-

Half of all life in the universe had been snuffed out. Loki couldn’t decide whether to bring himself to care about that, broadly. Nearly everyone he’d known was already dead.

He did decide not to feel guilt that he stole a disintegrating body right off the battlefield and reshaped it into himself – not even the greatest seidrmadr in all the nine realms could make something from nothing, after all. Undoubtedly Thor’s still-living mortal comrades would try to reverse the cataclysm. Loki wasn’t sure if they would succeed – many things _seemed_ impossible – but if they did, what was an error of one?

Thor was still alive, and, as long as he was, there might as well not have been any other life to begin with. Thor eclipsed everyone else. Thor blocked all Loki’s sunlight, but he was so bright Loki wanted for nothing.

The battle wasn’t won, just ended, and the leftover combatants, too shocked to regroup, had disbanded. Thor was staying in a set of apartments in the palace. He was there now. They were very princely. The whole country was; if Loki was one to be impressed by anything as far beneath him as Midgardians, he would have been impressed enough by Wakanda.

He appeared to his brother while he laid – restless as he’d been since they parted; Loki had peeked at him a few times – on a lounge and made every hair on his arms and the back of his neck stand up.

“It was very sweet, how you tried to avenge me. Though very stupid, as well.” A combination that worked well on him, it seemed, else Loki would not keep coming back to his brother, even surmounting death to do it.

He expected the blow, and the fierce hug that followed, and the raw kiss.

“I saw you die,” his brother said after he pulled back.

“Was it a comfortably familiar viewing experience?”

“Don’t joke, Loki,” Thor said, putting his hand on Loki’s cheek. It was a reasonable plea, but he doubted Thor would like his next alternative.

“Then shall we instead talk about how you tried to follow after me?”

Loki wasn’t selfless, and he wasn’t good, and though he had renounced villainy, he had no plans to strain himself becoming either, even before his latest death. Once Loki was gone for good, if that ever happened, he hoped for a quick reunion. But Thor should have known Loki would claw back to him and should have given him the chance to do it before he went battering down death’s door in pursuit.

“We were parted.”

“And now we aren’t anymore.” There was an implicit order in the reassurance. Loki threaded his hand tight in what was left of his brother’s hair until he got a nod in response to what he hadn’t said aloud. “I magicked myself back.” It was simpler than explaining the actual mechanics of it. They could get into that later, if Thor asked.

“Heimdall, and Brunnhilde, and all our people…”

Loki had been expecting the question and had steeled himself up not to get angry that he wasn’t enough for his brother, that Thor cared about something other than Loki, even if vice versa was not so. But he hated to answer. He didn’t have anything good to say.

“I’m a self-serving weasel who cheats death, not a miracle-worker. Or philanthropist.”

Thor closed his eyes – he had two of them again, though the replacement wasn’t near so pretty as its predecessor – in something too deep to be called disappointment, but not surprise. He seemed to accept Loki’s answer. Loki’s power had limitations, and not ones he set for himself, but probably not ones he would break if he figured them out – unless for… no, he put thoughts of his mother aside – the system had to work, broadly, for it to have loopholes.

Loki mashed himself against his brother’s side. “And because of it you’ll never be rid of me.”

Ten years ago, untested, it would have been a lie, though a reassuring one; five years ago, a threat. Now, it was a wish and a promise.

The sun was shining outside the vast window.

**Author's Note:**

> [Thotki.tumblr.com](https://thotki.tumblr.com)


End file.
